Gammons: Wrigley 'dump' tying Ricketts' hands

Wrigley Field is "a dump" that could be a bigger problem than expected for new Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, according to MLB Network analyst Peter Gammons.

“The problem that (Ricketts) has, and the Ricketts family has a serious issue, is they’re going to have to understand it’s not only rebuilding personnel,” Gammons said Friday on "The Mully and Hanley Show" on WSCR-AM 670. “They got to make that ballpark livable, it’s a dump, Wrigley Field. They’re going to have to spent $200-and-something million on re-renovating Wrigley Field, do what the Boston owners did with Fenway Park. And the investment is far greater than, I think, maybe they realize. That the amount of work that Wrigley Field needs is, there’s a ton of money that has to go into rebuilding that place.”

As Gammons noted, the Cubs also have a ton of money invested in bad contracts with players such as Alfonso Soriano.

“So they’ve got it on both ways,” Gammons said. “You know, they have to figure out: ‘OK, we’re assuming unmovable contracts in Soriano, [Carlos] Zambrano, a couple of other guys, and we need to invest somewhere between $100 and $250 million in the ballpark.’ And that’s a lot of investment ... The Cubs are a gold mine and they are one of the three or four national teams, but at the same time, they require a lot of work.”